From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tsetsaut is an extinct Athabascan language
formerly spoken in the Portland Canal area of northwestern British
Columbia. Virtually everything known of the language comes from
the limited material recorded by Franz Boas in 1894 from two Tsetsaut slaves
of the Nisga'a. It is not
known precisely when the language became extinct. One speaker was
still alive in 1927. The Nisga'a name for the Tsetsaut people
is "Jits'aawit"[1]

The Tsetsaut referred to themselves as the [wetaŀ]. The English
name Tsetsaut is an anglicization of [ts'əts'aut], "those
of the interior", used by the Gitksan and Nisga'a to refer to the Athabaskan-speaking
people to the north and east of them, including not only the
Tsetsaut but some Tahltan and Sekani.

Bibliography

Collison, W. H. (1915) In the Wake of the War Canoe: A
Stirring Record of Forty Years' Successful Labour, Peril and
Adventure amongst the Savage Indian Tribes of the Pacific Coast,
and the Piratical Head-Hunting Haida of the Queen Charlotte
Islands, British Columbia. Toronto: Musson Book Company.
Reprinted by Sono Nis Press, Victoria, B.C. (ed. by Charles
Lillard), 1981.